flank & tosca

certain someone was going to the market hall to get some bones for the dog so i asked him to bring "a flat piece of meat". he responded by asking "you mean like a flank steak?", he used that exact word...seems he's been reading my cooking magazines...

we had decided to grill the flank steak despite the fact that it's been raining for 3 days. the grilling was somewhat wet business...anyhow, here's the final result, delicious if i say so myself... 

i marinated the flank in soya sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, lime juice, grated garlic & ginger, chopped lemon grass and chili. sorry, there really isn't a recipe here, little of this, little of that...

i use a sturdy plastic bag, the clean-up is so much easier this way. had it marinating in the fridge for 6 hrs, took it out 1 hr before grilling. it's best to scrape off as much of the bits and pieces so that they don't burn on the grill...

for the salad "bed" i used shredded cabbage, sliced carrot (this slices with a peeling knife), ride noodles (with sesame oil), sauteed sweet onion (pictured here)...

...and blanched runner beans and sweet corn.

for the dressing i mixed soya sauce, sesame oil, lime juice, grated ginger and garlic and chopped chili and some sugar. firery stuff, but in a very good way.

whoa! obviously i didn't all the bits and pieces off. the flames did tame off, grilled the meat approx 4 mins per side.

let it rest for a while...

...before slicing part of it...

...to top off the salad, added lots of cilantro and parsley. we pigged out, the was only a tiny portion left of the salad, and about half of the meat. leftover meat will make great sandwich filler.

whilst doing whatever else i cooked up a veggie stew with roughly chopped onions, thinly sliced carrots, chopped celery sticks, chickpeas, crushed tomatoes, chopped zucchini and bell pepper and rye pasta (yep, there is pasta with 24% rye in it, very tasty), added some chicken stock for more flavor. this will make several lunches and/or dinners for both of us to take to work.

i (gasp) bought a tosca cake few weeks ago and although it was very good it seemed to fall short on what i'm used to. there was a time in the good old olden days when my mom made tosca cake very often. it's relatively easy to make and when it's perfect it's divine... but what you'd expect with all that butter, sugar, almonds and cream.

despite having well over 100 cookbooks i didn't find any "good" recipe for a tosca cake in them. i also searched the internet, but most of those recipes seemed to be just semi-clever variations of the real thing...so what is one to do? call mom...i have no idea where she has picked up this recipe:

for the cake:

4         eggs
2.5 dl  sugar
5    dl  all-purpose flour
3    tsp baking powder
200 gr butter, melted and cooled
1    dl  cream (or milk)

beat eggs and sugar until fluffy, add flour+baking powder mixture alternating with butter and cream. pour batter into two 20cm round loose bottom baking tins (or one 20x30 cm deep baking tin) and bake in 175C oven for 15 mins (until browned a bit and almost set in the middle)

for the tosca topping:

100 gr     butter
2     dl     sugar
2     tbsp all-purpose flour
2     dl     cream (or milk)
200 gr     sliced almonds

place all ingredients in a heavy bottom pot (i used a frying pan), mix well and let simmer for a few minutes until the mixture thickens a bit...

cakes are ready to be topped with tosca...

after dividing the topping between the two tins, they were baked for another 15 mins in 175C oven. as i forgot to rotate the pans mid-baking this one remained a tad undone in the middle and the tosca caused a sinkhole in the middle...but not to worry, it's still very, very delicious.

this is how both of them were supposed to look...

next time i will halve the amount of butter in the cake part. don't get me wrong, not trying to lighten this up, just think that smaller amount might do the work quite sufficiently. i will have some for breakfast tomorrow...

as luck would have it...

(she carefully lifts her head to see if anyone is still out there...)

the luck would have it part? the weather, what else! just as i had planned, carefully i might add, to grill some veggies and ambitiously try to do the same to a couple of nice steaks, the heavens open and it not just rains but pours down...

plan B was in order, there was the oven...

the veggies got chopped, the mushrooms filled with a mixture of cream cheese, minced mushroom stubs and fried bacon and topped with some more bacon. i tried a new cut of bacon here and it sort of worked. the traditional strip would have worked better.  

as the oven was on i decided to put the asparagus there as well. 200C with fan on for 15 mins. placed the other veggies on another baking tray, they cooked for 20 mins.

oozing goodness...

lemon juice for the asparagus

minced some lovage and thyme for the other veggies

i'm loving fennel right now

the steak got the old and tried method of pan frying. done my home work on how to get it right on the stove at the shack, not sure i'd been as lucky with my spanking new (coal) weber.

those two seem to have endless stories to tell each other...

ps. if you've ever mixed windows, chrome, nokia booklet and an apple apparatus you might have some sort of idea of my IT desperation during the past several weeks. whether i actually manage to post this online remains to be seen...

cabbage casserole & another with pasta

went to the store to get ground beef for a pasta casserole i was planning to make for dinner, but noticed this nice head of cabbage calling my name... sometimes that happens. this time listening to that voice resulted in very tasty cabbage casserole.

as you would have it, it all starts with cabbage, recipe is very simple and adjustable:

1 kg cabbage, shredded
400 gr minced beef browned (or go vegetarian and use tofu in some form)
1 liter veal stock, or any stock you have around (i made some from knorr fond)
2 dl barley pearls (quick cooking rice is fine, or precook brown rice for half the cooking time before adding to this recipe, if you omitted the beef and didn't use tofu of any kind, you could add more grains, if so, add more stock as well)
1 dl dark syrup

cooked in 200C oven for 1 hour, first half hour covered.

here, although the in season young cabbage cooks relatively fast, i wanted to save some time and sauteed it for about 10 mins on medium high heat, just to wilt it and get the cooking going. (if time isn't an issue, skip this part and mix with other ingredients raw. cook in the oven for 2 hrs, first hr covered with foil, for the second hr make sure the dish doesn't dry out and have some more stock around to add if needed.)

browned ground beef is one of my sins, i could eat all this...but didn't!

there are several types of fonds (basically it's an industrial variety of concentrated pan-juices) around. they are very convenient, but some contain too much salt, and of course, additives of all sorts. this particular "taste" from knorr is ok, but there is the fine line after which, if you add too much, the food has an "industrial" taste.

pearl barley, quick cooking kind. as the package says "domestic option to rice".

the dark syrup i used, to me syrup is the secret to this dish. if you think it's going to make it too sweet...start with a smaller amount.

i had one medium size sweet potato around, grated it roughly and added half to this dish (sweet potato is good for you, don't have any, don't worry, not essential). placed the cabbage, browned meat and barley in a big bowl, mixed well, placed the mixture into an oven dish, poured the stock and syrup on. on hindsight, some butter on top would have made everything taste even better...

...but for someone who used to hate everything with cabbage (=me), this was oh-so-good. when taking off the foil at half-time, check if you need to add some more stock. if it looks wet, you're good, if it looks dry at half-time add a good 3 dl more stock.

the second dish was mac and beef casserole. in finland it is traditionally made with white elbow macaroni, ground beef, milk and egg mixture to set it. i'm not a fan of white pasta, so i used full-grain spelt pasta.

recipe goes:

400 gr pasta, cooked
400 gr ground beef, browned
150 gr grated cheese (i used swiss type polar)
3 dl cream (used the fattier version, there are some lighter ones around)
(and that half of a roughly grated medium size sweet potato, totally optional, but it'll be good for you...)

you can certainly use more cheese if you like, i thought that with the full fat cream, i should go easy on the cheese (the cheese is only 15% fat).

again, mixed 2/3 of the cheese, pasta, ground beef and sweet potato in a big bowl, placed the mixture into an oven dish, poured the cream on top and covered with foil and placed next to the cabbage dish into the 200C oven for a half hr.

after the half hour took the dish out, added rest of the cheese and returned the dish to the oven for another 15 mins for the cheese to melt.

the spelt pasta might be an acquired taste as it is very "healthy" (but nothing a good squirt of ketchup can't cure). this was perfect to have right out of the oven, but if re-heated it could use a bit more liquid, whether in the form of cream or stock of any kind.

tomorrow you'll see what we had for dessert...

loaves, steak & asparagus with bearnaise

we were back form switzerland late on friday evening, but the weather has been too nice to sit indoors and post on the blog...sorry about that.

on sunday, however, i felt like it would be a good day to bake bread.







baking bread could do with the fact that i found the remains of the biga i used to bake ciabatta little over a week ago. i've read about making your own biga and baking with it. the fanciest versions take 14 days to get going, and you need to feed it at specific times...too much hassle for my taste.

i figured that since this biga still showed some signs of life (bubbles) it was useable. i did add 1 sachet (11gr) of dry yeast to the dough, used 4,5 dl water, 0,5 dl cream and approx 10 dl of flour...







...mixture of these two flours in fact.







gave the dough a good workout with my kitchen aid.







after the first rise i punched the dough and formed two loaves out of it...







the loaves here after the second rise. i let them rise on these smaller baking trays and had the big ones in the oven getting hot. when the oven was hot, i just slid the loaves onto the bigger ones in the over. it seems the bottoms get a harder crust this way. i will keep on doing this until i get my pizza stone to bake on.







baked them in 200C oven with convection on. in the beginning threw some water on the bottom of the oven and placed 2 little bowls with water on both baking trays.

the crust was perfectly hardened and the inside moist. not sure if i've mentioned this before, but my meter on how good the home baked bread is, is how the bread tastes on day two, or three. sure, warm bread is always good, but let it sit for a day and it becomes soggy, soft and sometimes develops a nasty yeasty flavor. this one was nice even on day three, thank you saint honoratus, or something...







my previous attempt to make a hollandaise ended very messy. long story short, i had cooked and reduced the vinegar and spices, whipped in the egg yolks in a double boiler, seasoned the sauce (so good!!) when i took hold of the sauce pot with my left hand (important detail)...next thing i know, there is this huge pain, in my left hand, and because of the pain i let go of the sauce pot...there was probably a one fifth left in the pot, rest of the sauce was all over the counter and the floor. i was not a happy cooker.

anyways. yesterday i chose to make bearnaise instead of hollandaise. there were numerous recipes in (my numerous) cookbooks but i chose anna olsen's recipe for the fact that it looked the simplest...the recipe is from in the kitchen with anna (amazon sells it, too), but doesn't seem to be online. here is what went in: melted butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, white wine, tarragon, salt and pepper.







it's spring and time for asparagus...







...fried us nice steaks to go along with the green goodness.







certain someone seemed to enjoys his dinner a lot. however, next time i will definitely use fresh tarragon in the sauce. i know tarragon has somewhat of a slightly bad reputation, but it does serve a purpose in the bearnaise, i think. just don't go overboard with it!

a lot of sauce you say? well, i figured that since i eat bearnaise maybe three times a year, i can have all i want when i do eat it...







the swiss pictures are coming, please be patient. there are a lot of them and i still need to pick the best ones to post...

second take on the steak

spent the last few days at the cottage visiting my parents, certain someone and the dog got to go with this time. i had decided to try the cognac coffee marinated steaks another time, just to make sure the first time's success wasn't accidental.

the picture isn't that great, bad lighting, i was hungry, and what not...







i thought that there must be some sort of bbq-sauce at the cottage, but no. to solve that problem i mixed some dijon mustard, ketchup (oh yes...), crushed black pepper, oil and white vinegar to stand in for the bbq-sauce, then added some cognac and coffee. exact measures? nope, some of this, some of that...

placed the steaks into the plastic bag and left to marinate overnight







next day, mom peeled and cubed some veggies to be roasted in the oven







the oven of a wood-burning stove to be exact. the veggies turned out great...







...the steaks were a tab bit more challenging on that stove...but they turned out perfect, if possible, even better that the first time. after browning the steaks on the hot pan on both sides, i placed them on a plate and kept warm while i made the sauce. poured some of the marinade and generous amount of cream to the pan, brought to a boil, added some sugar and the steaks for a few more minutes before serving. blissful, if you're carnivore, that is.

a fair warning, after this picture it's just about the dog and snow...







the dog loves it at the cottage. the reason is very simple, it's the only place where he can run free, in the winter that is. and boy, did he run. he also tried to escape at night but we had smartened up and locked the door (he had learned to push the door open during previous visits...)







a sunrise at approx 9am on jan 26







it's been a weird winter. there's been so much snow that the freezing temperatures haven't been able to freeze the lake like usual. there is some ice, then slush, then a lot of snow. the dog is light enough to be able to walk/run on it. mom and dad haven't been able to put the nets under the ice this winter...therefore no fresh fish.







he was almost too fast for me...







we have no idea why the dog loves playing lumberjack...he dug this birch from under the snow and tried to bite it to pieces...